Adele's Collaborator Dan Wilson Goes Solo With an Album

The songwriter, who has written with Adele, the Dixie Chicks, Dierks Bentley, Nas and Taylor Swift, releases a solo album.

ENLARGE

Dan Wilson
David Bowman for The Wall Street Journal

By

Eric R. Danton

April 15, 2014 1:00 p.m. ET

Dan Wilson estimates that he has written 500 songs during a career stretching back to the late 1980s. Of those tunes, "I'm sure I've made 90% of my income from five of them," the singer and songwriter says.

Speakeasy

They include some pretty big titles: Mr. Wilson co-wrote Adele's massive 2011 hit "Someone Like You," the Dixie Chicks' Grammy-winning 2006 song "Not Ready to Make Nice" and Dierks Bentley's 2011 country chart-topper "Home," along with the 1998 hit "Closing Time," recorded by Mr. Wilson's '90s alt-rock band Semisonic.

Those tunes have helped make the Minneapolis native an in-demand collaborator who has also written with artists including Taylor Swift, John Legend, the rapper Nas, pop singer Pink and Carole King. "You make time to write with Dan," says Emily Robison of the Dixie Chicks and Court Yard Hounds.

Artwork by Dan Wilson

Dan Wilson is a visual artist on top of being a successful singer and songwriter. Here is a selection of his artwork, including illustrations from his new album, 'Love Without Fear.' Dan Wilson

The hits have also allowed Mr. Wilson, 52, to carry on a solo career, which includes the new album "Love Without Fear," a collection of 11 catchy, literate pop songs that comes out this week. It's his first solo studio recording since "Free Life" in 2007, which has sold about 60,000 copies world-wide, according to his manager, Jim Grant. Mr. Wilson says, "The co-songwriting that I do, especially with pop stars who sell millions of copies, that's going to fund me doing other projects, including working with young artists who are brilliant and haven't had their break yet."

The hits he's written have made him wealthy, Mr. Wilson says, "But not so much that I could just stop working for the rest of my life and live on a beach."

Not that he'd want to. One of his biggest challenges, Mr. Wilson says, is finding time for all the creative pursuits that interest him. In addition to writing, recording and producing music, he draws and paints. He even designed a 24-page book of his handwritten lyrics and illustrations for a deluxe CD edition of "Love Without Fear." The album is coming out on Mr. Wilson's own Ballroom Music label (in conjunction with Kobalt Label Services, which will help distribute and market the album), in part so the singer could make the packaging look the way he wanted, Mr. Grant said.

Mr. Wilson majored in visual arts at Harvard University and established himself as a successful visual artist after college, while also playing in a band. In the '90s, he turned his attention more fully to music. Working as a painter was a lonely life, he says, while playing music and co-writing songs appeals to his social, interactive nature. "It makes sense that what I do is collaborate with people who make me laugh for several days, and then we have an awesome song," Mr. Wilson says.

These days, Mr. Wilson actually schedules blocks of time for his various artistic interests, but that's not always how he has worked. He describes getting "completely immersed" in art projects as a child, and focusing so intently on songwriting collaborations that "nothing can distract me from it."

"Love Without Fear" represents both sides of his creative personality, Mr. Wilson says. He holed up alone in his attic in Minneapolis to write most of the songs. (He said that he moved to Los Angeles in the middle of making the album and doesn't miss Minnesota winters.)

Mr. Wilson devised a system to keep himself creatively involved. On notecards, he'd write down a potential title or a fragment of a lyric. Eventually, he had a stack. On his smartphone, he'd record snippets of melodic ideas, amassing a stockpile of 1,000. Then Mr. Wilson would play the role of his own co-writer, building up songs from these sources.

"Songwriters have a lot of crazy notions, and a lot of it is being creative with the creative process," he says.

Mr. Wilson ended up recording "Love Without Fear" twice, playing most of the instruments himself on the "painterly, solitary version" of the album. Dissatisfied with the results, he rerecorded many of the songs in L.A. with contributions from friends including Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, pop singer Sara Bareilles, guitarist Blake Mills and, from the progressive bluegrass group Nickel Creek, Sara and Sean Watkins. "The songs were transformed," Mr. Wilson says.

He got his start in music when he joined Trip Shakespeare, a band his older brother, Matt Wilson, founded while at Harvard. The younger Mr. Wilson contributed to three of the group's four albums before the quartet split in the early '90s. He and Trip Shakespeare bassist John Munson later formed Semisonic with drummer Jacob Slichter, and the trio released three LPs between 1996 and 2001. Their 1998 album, "Feeling Strangely Fine," included "Closing Time," which made No. 1 on Billboard's Modern Rock chart and has appeared in TV shows including "Melrose Place," "The Simpsons" and "How I Met Your Mother."

Although Semisonic still performs occasionally, Mr. Wilson has kept busy as a songwriter for much of the past decade, starting when he co-wrote five songs with the Dixie Chicks for their 2006 album "Taking the Long Way." The country trio met Mr. Wilson through the producer Rick Rubin, who was recording Mr. Wilson's "Free Life" while the Dixie Chicks were writing with different collaborators for "Taking the Long Way." Mr. Wilson's songs stood out, Ms. Robison says, and so did his approach to co-writing.

"He really gleans from you what's going on in your life," she says.

"Taking the Long Way" was a hit, selling more than two million copies and winning five Grammys for the Dixie Chicks—including one for Song of the Year that Mr. Wilson shared for co-writing "Not Ready to Make Nice." (He later won a Grammy for Album of the Year for his work as a producer on Adele's 2011 album "21.")

Mr. Wilson credits "Free Life," and Mr. Rubin, for opening the door to his songwriting career. Although the album sold modestly, the right people heard it. "I think it's had a disproportionate impact on my life," Mr. Wilson says.

Though he's written, and contributed to, platinum-selling albums, Mr. Wilson's commercial expectations for "Love Without Fear" are more measured. "I would love to break even on the expenses I had for it," he says.

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